A bitingly funny coming-of-age story concerning a teenage cartoonist who vehemently rejects the comforts of his suburban life, Owen Kline’s “Funny Pages” is one of the best films of the summer.
Kline’s satirical jabs hit where they hurt. His film plays like a millennial “American Splendor,” only better. Shot in 2019, “Funny Pages” was sitting in post-production hell for the better part of three years until none other than the Safdies saved it and then A24 jumped onboard. It finally premiered at Cannes this past May.
Interrogating his own privileged upbringing, Kline’s film is about a teenage boy (Daniel Zolghadri) who throws away the luxury of his upper-class life to try and live the grimy city life as a cartoonist. There he meets a vulgar cartoon artist (Matthew Maher) which leads to things getting tense and ugly, in seriously comedic fashion it course.
The casting in this one is incredible. The cast actors not only inhabit their weirdo characters, but make you believe they are true flesh and blood. It’s a lo-fi masterpiece, filled with brilliantly deranged set-pieces, that tackles misbegotten artistic Impulses in weird and dirty ways.
No wonder the Safdies produced this one. You can easily see them directing such a film in their early years; it’s pure “gutter poetry.” [A-]